6 ms·

The Undermining of the CDC

113 points by bookofjoe 1y ago

bookofjoe 1y ago
https://archive.ph/auQhC https://archive.ph/auQhC
baggy_trough 1y ago
> The privilege that American scientists have taken for granted—one that is now being trampled—is the ability to go about their work free of political interference. Hilariously blinkered.
- jfengel 1y ago
  It really did work like that. Government agencies in general are largely insulated from politics. You do your day to day work and wouldn't even notice a change of administration. The political appointees set the overall direction, and so projects come and go -- more or less at the same rate as they do even under the same administration. Having the President interfere so directly with ongoing operations is unprecedented. Maybe that's a good thing; people wanted a change and they got it. But it's not usual.
  - gandalfgeek 1y ago
    > Government agencies in general are largely insulated from politics. This was obviously false during the pandemic when these “health” agencies did what the White House wanted, from the actual “science” to the messaging.
    - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
      Same president both times. Same bad idea.
    - oblio 1y ago
      You can both be right. Goverment agencies can do their own thing under normal circumstances and be politicized when their activity is the focus of a huge political event, like a pandemic.
    - UncleMeat 1y ago
      Did the left secretly run the white house in 2020?
  - matkoniecz 1y ago
    "largely insulated from politics" note that claim they made is that in past there was no political interference at all, not that it was smaller or manageable
    - Arainach 1y ago
      "largely" does not mean "completely".
      - matkoniecz 1y ago
        yes, exactly. And article makes the "completely" claim > The privilege that American scientists have taken for granted—one that is now being trampled—is the ability to go about their work free of political interference. which is just wrong and further erodes trust.
        Arainach 1y ago
        You're adding words that aren't there. If in the past they could do 98% of their job without political influence most people would describe that as being free to do their jobs without influence. If there's now political hacks interfering in 50% or more of their job that's a big change. If in the past the political hacks were never interfering with THEIR role, just affecting what projects get funded, and now the hacks are interfering directly with them and controlling what they can say or publish - that's obviously new and significantly worse influence.
epistasis 1y ago
For there to be democracy, there must be accountability. For there to be accountability, there must be some sense of truth, and under that some sense of trust of each other. What we have seen happen over the past decade is quite similar what happened in Russia in decades before it: complete dismantling of trust, of the idea of truth, of the idea of honesty or integrity. And in that space of uncertainty, a new sort of ruling class is enabled to control the population. Anti-vaxxers used to be a tiny minority, and living in a crunchy leftish area, they were concentrated around me, and I got into arguments with them all the time. Now, they are no longer leftists, they are MAHA/MAGA, because their fundamental view of the world is not left/right, it's authority/antiauthority. Vaccines were rejected as much because of the idea of an authority "knowing stuff" as it is about the ickiness of something impure being injected into the body, as much as they love the idea of "everything natural" including "natural" infectious disease. We've destroyed the idea of expertise and authority based on knowledge that's open to anybody who wants to put in the time to learn, and replaced it with authority that exists merely because it hated the past authority, and became what it hated.
- NotGMan 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - hiddencost 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - javier2 1y ago
    No, it wasn't, and these extremely marginal results got way too much attention compared to the millions of results showing all the valuable results from broad vaccination.
  - epistasis 1y ago
    You are not being honest, but you are trying to your best to undermine the idea of honesty. Every vaccine safety study was questioned and examined, thoroughly. Introducing this idea of "mocked and ostracized," is a rhetorical tactic to try to establish the idea of some sort of mistreated people that other mistreated people can identify with. It's not based in truth of how the scientific community worked. If there's "mocking and ostracization" then it's in some sort of other social space, not in the evaluation of the vaccine safety studies. And by trying to conflate these two areas, you are trying to undermine the very idea of truth seeking, and replace it with this weird vibes-based in-group/out-group emotionally-based judgements. We need to pivot to rationality, and away from in-group/out-group analysis. Let's evaluate claims on their merits, not based on who is making them.
NotGMan 1y ago
Doctors should wear pharma sponsorships on their coats like Formula 1 drivers do. Would put things into perspective.
- epistasis 1y ago
  They do, on their publications. It's all there. And it's not as pervasive as you might think. I remember a very famous cancer researcher who destroyed his career by not disclosing these relationships: https://cancerletter.com/the-cancer-letter/20180914_1/ https://cancerletter.com/the-cancer-letter/20180914_1/ Now, he's on the extreme end because no other cancer researcher has ever gotten quite that much, as far as I know. But there aren't even accusations that he gave favorable results to any drugs form companies that sponsored him, as far as I have every heard, it was merely that he didn't disclose that destroyed his career. This is a level of honesty and transparency that does not exist in most of society, and we should be proud in the US that science is so clean compared to every other aspect of our society. And for all the big money, pharma is far far more honest than grifters like those in the anti-vaxxer space who do not disclose how they are making their money, and who do directly benefit from pushing unproven experimental treatments that do not go through the same rigorous vetting that standard pharma does.
- Calavar 1y ago
  Doctors do, as required by federal law. You can look up any doctor you like: https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov
matkoniecz 1y ago
> The privilege that American scientists have taken for granted—one that is now being trampled—is the ability to go about their work free of political interference. Communism style solutions ("it is better to have everyone being extremely poor, rather than having some poor and some rich people") is a terrible solution. Trampling on everyone because other group got trampled earlier is not a solution at all. Presenting insane and deadly pseudoscience as science is stupid, dangerous and will kill people. But claiming that there were no problems whatsoever and no political interference at all is a really dubious claim. This kind of reality denial is unhelpful and further erodes whatever trust was left.
- whateveracct 1y ago
  I think you're taking issue with the wrong thing here lol. There may have been something before (it's the real world after all), but what RFK is doing is quite frankly insane.
  - matkoniecz 1y ago
    > what RFK is doing is quite frankly insane. oh definitely - that is why I have not commented on this part of article, as I agree that such pseudoscience is simply idiotic, dangerous and will kill people and I am in agreement that it is bad But this part made me go "really? really? really?" - this kind of reality denial is not helpful either and prompted my comment. And they could phrase it a bit more mildly for far greater accuracy. I edited my initial comment a bit.
- croes 1y ago
  Even in communism some were richer than others
- swed420 1y ago
  Both Repubs & Dems have lots of blood on their hands for their intentional mishandling of COVID (continued to this day, since the pandemic is not over) in service to our archaic consumption-first economy: https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-consent https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co... https://web.archive.org/web/20240802024326/https://docs.house.gov/meetings/VC/VC00/20220302/114453/HHRG-117-VC00-20220302-SD009.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20240802024326/https://docs.hous... Capital interests own and control both parties, so it's no surprise we are getting results where it's okay to set the meat grinder to high.
dreamcompiler 1y ago
We are embarking on a population-level Darwin Award experiment. Once the stupid people die off the overall population's resistance to stupidity will increase a little bit. But getting there means a huge number of innocent, non-stupid people will die.
- Gud 1y ago
  What makes you think the stupid people will die off? Seems to me they're the ones breeding.
- FrustratedMonky 1y ago
  Not even a joke. States with lower Covid Vaccine coverage had more deaths. Technically, are Red States correct that they will achieve herd immunity, by letting their weak die off?
  - Esophagus4 1y ago
    Early in COVID, someone said to me, “survival rates are good - it’s only going to affect the weak.” …without realizing the irony that he was mid-40s, overweight, and had had an acute heart problem. The funny thing about the “natural immunity” crowd is that they don’t seem to grasp their own comorbidities. Yet of the unvaccinated COVID patients admitted to hospital, 2/3 admitted they regretted not getting vaccinated. I guess everybody’s brave until they’re in a hospital bed with a low pulse ox.
    - venturecruelty 1y ago
      I mean, even the idea of "it's only going to affect the weak" is disgusting and horrible. "The weak" is someone's grandmother, or their dad with a heart transplant, or their newborn baby. There is some pretty filthy, wretched ideology in the world that says very similar things about people it perceives as not worthy of being alive. And someday, for any of us who are blessed to live that long, we will be weak, too. We will be infirm. We will arrive at the end of our lives deserving protection, too, just like all of those people who were wantonly discarded during the pandemic. Every life lost is a tragedy, especially when it is, to an extent, preventable. Not perfectly, and not without mistakes, but we could've done better than we did. It's heartbreaking that so many people are so willing to sacrifice the very people society should be trying to protect.
jmclnx 1y ago
Between this and defunding of Univ. research plus the banning of $ for mRNA vaccine, the US just handed the future of Medical Research to China. I have seen articles recently that states China now leads the word in mRNA research, which is the future of vaccine research. Soon I expect the US to only allow praying over people for medical treatment, we are not far from that with the recent ACA changes.
- robocat 1y ago
  > China now leads the word in mRNA research A big cross-section between civilian and military technology leads to strong military strength... E.g. manufacturing, drone parts, many commodity resources etc
SirensOfTitan 1y ago
This essay rubs me the wrong way in that it continues to invest in this coastal elite attitude that the masses should do what we say because we are the experts. These people continue to miss the forest for the trees by avoiding the question: why have Americans lost faith in institutions? I largely consider Trump a symptom of a larger disorder, I think it is lazy to assume that he and his administration is the source of the breakdown here. Two thinkers come to mind to me in this case: 1. Hannah Arendt, particularly her writing in The Human Condition (and maybe as an analogue: the Anthony Downs book on Bureaucracy and perhaps Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society I think?): > Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant. Another comment talks about accountability, but a bureau is composed of people "just doing their jobs" without the personal accountability that helps keep systems accountable. Per Downs, bureaus eventually become mainly obsessed with their own survival over their original mandate, and it requires careful design to avoid this consequence. 2. Christopher Lasch: The idea that government institutions are required to force an centralized objectivity for democracy to survive is just about the opposite of what I think we actually need, per Lasch: > "[Specialized expertise is] the antithesis of democracy." > "Democracy works best when men and women do things for themselves, with the help of their friends and neighbors, instead of depending on the state." The attitude as espoused in this essay will not do any work to re-establish trust with Americans, it continues a long line of unaccountability or reflectiveness from the "adults in the room" on their own contributions to the degradation of the system by pretending Republicans or Trump are a unique aberration.
- conception 1y ago
  You don’t think it’s more one party spending 40 years undermining Institutions to be able to gut them starting with Reagan’s “The Most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’”? partially caused by the business elite working to gain influence over government since the Powell memo and partially caused by irrational fear of communism via socialism and partially by conservatives never wanting another Nixon and starting their own mouthpiece with Fox News, etc etc? Seems more like a well concentrated effort to me.
calvinmorrison 1y ago
[flagged]
- nullocator 1y ago
  My advice would be to try and let this go, it was years ago. The only thing statements like this are going to convince people of is that you are unhinged and cannot get over being asked to wear a mask few months. I think for the most part we get it, we understand that you believe your liberties and freedoms were trampled on because you were asked to show consideration for fellow human beings, that despite all of us having experienced wearing a masking and know exactly what it actually feels like, we understand that it isn't what most of us would consider a desirable experience, but neither is it the great injustice you all are claiming. Seeing someone in a mask might make your blood boil or send you into a white hot rage; for the rest of us I suspect we just feel empathy at someone who is sick or doesn't want to me.
josefritzishere 1y ago
There are moments when it looks like the plan is quite literally to cause a mass die-off. White that seems paranoid at best, and very cynical at best... that is the obvious outcome of low vaccine compliance. We can see this from death rates before the vaccine era.
- nullocator 1y ago
  I agree this is how it feels, its like the evil and corrupt of this country are actively convincing huge swaths of the poor and uneducated to basically undermine and kill themselves. A good chunk of this thread is a handful of people so detached from the actual plot that they are hell bent on carrying on a vendetta against a doctor and scientist they've never met, because they feel like his advice to the american people personally wronged them in some unforgivable and most egregious way. When people can’t distinguish between the opinions of YouTube or Fox News commentators and decades of scientific research, it’s hard to know what the rest of us can do except watch in disbelief and abject horror.
vatsachak 1y ago
COVID protocols destroyed social ability in young people and I don't know if that was a price worth the small death rate in those below 50 They also furthered the anti-vaxx crowd, which is a bad thing I think what people don't understand is that effects of the vaccine are smaller than the effects of the actual virus. It was an accidental leak of a crafted virus from an internationally funded lab. The world was just SOL
jaybrendansmith 1y ago
We should all be concerned. I was watching Ken Burns, and it seems Washington ordered all his troops to be inoculated for Smallpox, and it made a huge difference in that war. Vaccines are good science, and the amount of testing we do to check safety is simply astonishing. We got extremely lucky with Covid-19, it was a warning shot, and we are taking away the wrong lessons from it. When bird flu comes with 50% mortality (half of the people you know will die, mostly children) we will go into complete lockdown with a required MRNA vaccine and we will thank God or Providence that we have people with the knowledge to make them.
anthonyknox1 1y ago
We live in the fattest and sickest country in the developed world; we were on our way to extinction long before the current administration took office, and the solutions are clearly not more of the same.

113 points by bookofjoe 1y ago

https://archive.ph/auQhC https://archive.ph/auQhC

> The privilege that American scientists have taken for granted—one that is now being trampled—is the ability to go about their work free of political interference. Hilariously blinkered.

jfengel 1y ago
It really did work like that. Government agencies in general are largely insulated from politics. You do your day to day work and wouldn't even notice a change of administration. The political appointees set the overall direction, and so projects come and go -- more or less at the same rate as they do even under the same administration. Having the President interfere so directly with ongoing operations is unprecedented. Maybe that's a good thing; people wanted a change and they got it. But it's not usual.
- gandalfgeek 1y ago
  > Government agencies in general are largely insulated from politics. This was obviously false during the pandemic when these “health” agencies did what the White House wanted, from the actual “science” to the messaging.
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    Same president both times. Same bad idea.
  - oblio 1y ago
    You can both be right. Goverment agencies can do their own thing under normal circumstances and be politicized when their activity is the focus of a huge political event, like a pandemic.
  - UncleMeat 1y ago
    Did the left secretly run the white house in 2020?
- matkoniecz 1y ago
  "largely insulated from politics" note that claim they made is that in past there was no political interference at all, not that it was smaller or manageable
  - Arainach 1y ago
    "largely" does not mean "completely".
    - matkoniecz 1y ago
      yes, exactly. And article makes the "completely" claim > The privilege that American scientists have taken for granted—one that is now being trampled—is the ability to go about their work free of political interference. which is just wrong and further erodes trust.
      - Arainach 1y ago
        You're adding words that aren't there. If in the past they could do 98% of their job without political influence most people would describe that as being free to do their jobs without influence. If there's now political hacks interfering in 50% or more of their job that's a big change. If in the past the political hacks were never interfering with THEIR role, just affecting what projects get funded, and now the hacks are interfering directly with them and controlling what they can say or publish - that's obviously new and significantly worse influence.

epistasis 1y ago

For there to be democracy, there must be accountability. For there to be accountability, there must be some sense of truth, and under that some sense of trust of each other. What we have seen happen over the past decade is quite similar what happened in Russia in decades before it: complete dismantling of trust, of the idea of truth, of the idea of honesty or integrity. And in that space of uncertainty, a new sort of ruling class is enabled to control the population. Anti-vaxxers used to be a tiny minority, and living in a crunchy leftish area, they were concentrated around me, and I got into arguments with them all the time. Now, they are no longer leftists, they are MAHA/MAGA, because their fundamental view of the world is not left/right, it's authority/antiauthority. Vaccines were rejected as much because of the idea of an authority "knowing stuff" as it is about the ickiness of something impure being injected into the body, as much as they love the idea of "everything natural" including "natural" infectious disease. We've destroyed the idea of expertise and authority based on knowledge that's open to anybody who wants to put in the time to learn, and replaced it with authority that exists merely because it hated the past authority, and became what it hated.

NotGMan 1y ago
[flagged]
- hiddencost 1y ago
  [flagged]
- javier2 1y ago
  No, it wasn't, and these extremely marginal results got way too much attention compared to the millions of results showing all the valuable results from broad vaccination.
- epistasis 1y ago
  You are not being honest, but you are trying to your best to undermine the idea of honesty. Every vaccine safety study was questioned and examined, thoroughly. Introducing this idea of "mocked and ostracized," is a rhetorical tactic to try to establish the idea of some sort of mistreated people that other mistreated people can identify with. It's not based in truth of how the scientific community worked. If there's "mocking and ostracization" then it's in some sort of other social space, not in the evaluation of the vaccine safety studies. And by trying to conflate these two areas, you are trying to undermine the very idea of truth seeking, and replace it with this weird vibes-based in-group/out-group emotionally-based judgements. We need to pivot to rationality, and away from in-group/out-group analysis. Let's evaluate claims on their merits, not based on who is making them.

NotGMan 1y ago

Doctors should wear pharma sponsorships on their coats like Formula 1 drivers do. Would put things into perspective.

epistasis 1y ago
They do, on their publications. It's all there. And it's not as pervasive as you might think. I remember a very famous cancer researcher who destroyed his career by not disclosing these relationships: https://cancerletter.com/the-cancer-letter/20180914_1/ https://cancerletter.com/the-cancer-letter/20180914_1/ Now, he's on the extreme end because no other cancer researcher has ever gotten quite that much, as far as I know. But there aren't even accusations that he gave favorable results to any drugs form companies that sponsored him, as far as I have every heard, it was merely that he didn't disclose that destroyed his career. This is a level of honesty and transparency that does not exist in most of society, and we should be proud in the US that science is so clean compared to every other aspect of our society. And for all the big money, pharma is far far more honest than grifters like those in the anti-vaxxer space who do not disclose how they are making their money, and who do directly benefit from pushing unproven experimental treatments that do not go through the same rigorous vetting that standard pharma does.
Calavar 1y ago
Doctors do, as required by federal law. You can look up any doctor you like: https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov https://openpaymentsdata.cms.gov

matkoniecz 1y ago

> The privilege that American scientists have taken for granted—one that is now being trampled—is the ability to go about their work free of political interference. Communism style solutions ("it is better to have everyone being extremely poor, rather than having some poor and some rich people") is a terrible solution. Trampling on everyone because other group got trampled earlier is not a solution at all. Presenting insane and deadly pseudoscience as science is stupid, dangerous and will kill people. But claiming that there were no problems whatsoever and no political interference at all is a really dubious claim. This kind of reality denial is unhelpful and further erodes whatever trust was left.

whateveracct 1y ago
I think you're taking issue with the wrong thing here lol. There may have been something before (it's the real world after all), but what RFK is doing is quite frankly insane.
- matkoniecz 1y ago
  > what RFK is doing is quite frankly insane. oh definitely - that is why I have not commented on this part of article, as I agree that such pseudoscience is simply idiotic, dangerous and will kill people and I am in agreement that it is bad But this part made me go "really? really? really?" - this kind of reality denial is not helpful either and prompted my comment. And they could phrase it a bit more mildly for far greater accuracy. I edited my initial comment a bit.
croes 1y ago
Even in communism some were richer than others
swed420 1y ago
Both Repubs & Dems have lots of blood on their hands for their intentional mishandling of COVID (continued to this day, since the pandemic is not over) in service to our archaic consumption-first economy: https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-consent https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co... https://web.archive.org/web/20240802024326/https://docs.house.gov/meetings/VC/VC00/20220302/114453/HHRG-117-VC00-20220302-SD009.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20240802024326/https://docs.hous... Capital interests own and control both parties, so it's no surprise we are getting results where it's okay to set the meat grinder to high.

dreamcompiler 1y ago

We are embarking on a population-level Darwin Award experiment. Once the stupid people die off the overall population's resistance to stupidity will increase a little bit. But getting there means a huge number of innocent, non-stupid people will die.

Gud 1y ago
What makes you think the stupid people will die off? Seems to me they're the ones breeding.
FrustratedMonky 1y ago
Not even a joke. States with lower Covid Vaccine coverage had more deaths. Technically, are Red States correct that they will achieve herd immunity, by letting their weak die off?
- Esophagus4 1y ago
  Early in COVID, someone said to me, “survival rates are good - it’s only going to affect the weak.” …without realizing the irony that he was mid-40s, overweight, and had had an acute heart problem. The funny thing about the “natural immunity” crowd is that they don’t seem to grasp their own comorbidities. Yet of the unvaccinated COVID patients admitted to hospital, 2/3 admitted they regretted not getting vaccinated. I guess everybody’s brave until they’re in a hospital bed with a low pulse ox.
  - venturecruelty 1y ago
    I mean, even the idea of "it's only going to affect the weak" is disgusting and horrible. "The weak" is someone's grandmother, or their dad with a heart transplant, or their newborn baby. There is some pretty filthy, wretched ideology in the world that says very similar things about people it perceives as not worthy of being alive. And someday, for any of us who are blessed to live that long, we will be weak, too. We will be infirm. We will arrive at the end of our lives deserving protection, too, just like all of those people who were wantonly discarded during the pandemic. Every life lost is a tragedy, especially when it is, to an extent, preventable. Not perfectly, and not without mistakes, but we could've done better than we did. It's heartbreaking that so many people are so willing to sacrifice the very people society should be trying to protect.

jmclnx 1y ago

Between this and defunding of Univ. research plus the banning of $ for mRNA vaccine, the US just handed the future of Medical Research to China. I have seen articles recently that states China now leads the word in mRNA research, which is the future of vaccine research. Soon I expect the US to only allow praying over people for medical treatment, we are not far from that with the recent ACA changes.

robocat 1y ago
> China now leads the word in mRNA research A big cross-section between civilian and military technology leads to strong military strength... E.g. manufacturing, drone parts, many commodity resources etc

SirensOfTitan 1y ago

This essay rubs me the wrong way in that it continues to invest in this coastal elite attitude that the masses should do what we say because we are the experts. These people continue to miss the forest for the trees by avoiding the question: why have Americans lost faith in institutions? I largely consider Trump a symptom of a larger disorder, I think it is lazy to assume that he and his administration is the source of the breakdown here. Two thinkers come to mind to me in this case: 1. Hannah Arendt, particularly her writing in The Human Condition (and maybe as an analogue: the Anthony Downs book on Bureaucracy and perhaps Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society I think?): > Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule by Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant. Another comment talks about accountability, but a bureau is composed of people "just doing their jobs" without the personal accountability that helps keep systems accountable. Per Downs, bureaus eventually become mainly obsessed with their own survival over their original mandate, and it requires careful design to avoid this consequence. 2. Christopher Lasch: The idea that government institutions are required to force an centralized objectivity for democracy to survive is just about the opposite of what I think we actually need, per Lasch: > "[Specialized expertise is] the antithesis of democracy." > "Democracy works best when men and women do things for themselves, with the help of their friends and neighbors, instead of depending on the state." The attitude as espoused in this essay will not do any work to re-establish trust with Americans, it continues a long line of unaccountability or reflectiveness from the "adults in the room" on their own contributions to the degradation of the system by pretending Republicans or Trump are a unique aberration.

conception 1y ago
You don’t think it’s more one party spending 40 years undermining Institutions to be able to gut them starting with Reagan’s “The Most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help’”? partially caused by the business elite working to gain influence over government since the Powell memo and partially caused by irrational fear of communism via socialism and partially by conservatives never wanting another Nixon and starting their own mouthpiece with Fox News, etc etc? Seems more like a well concentrated effort to me.

calvinmorrison 1y ago

[flagged]

nullocator 1y ago
My advice would be to try and let this go, it was years ago. The only thing statements like this are going to convince people of is that you are unhinged and cannot get over being asked to wear a mask few months. I think for the most part we get it, we understand that you believe your liberties and freedoms were trampled on because you were asked to show consideration for fellow human beings, that despite all of us having experienced wearing a masking and know exactly what it actually feels like, we understand that it isn't what most of us would consider a desirable experience, but neither is it the great injustice you all are claiming. Seeing someone in a mask might make your blood boil or send you into a white hot rage; for the rest of us I suspect we just feel empathy at someone who is sick or doesn't want to me.

josefritzishere 1y ago

There are moments when it looks like the plan is quite literally to cause a mass die-off. White that seems paranoid at best, and very cynical at best... that is the obvious outcome of low vaccine compliance. We can see this from death rates before the vaccine era.

nullocator 1y ago
I agree this is how it feels, its like the evil and corrupt of this country are actively convincing huge swaths of the poor and uneducated to basically undermine and kill themselves. A good chunk of this thread is a handful of people so detached from the actual plot that they are hell bent on carrying on a vendetta against a doctor and scientist they've never met, because they feel like his advice to the american people personally wronged them in some unforgivable and most egregious way. When people can’t distinguish between the opinions of YouTube or Fox News commentators and decades of scientific research, it’s hard to know what the rest of us can do except watch in disbelief and abject horror.

vatsachak 1y ago

COVID protocols destroyed social ability in young people and I don't know if that was a price worth the small death rate in those below 50 They also furthered the anti-vaxx crowd, which is a bad thing I think what people don't understand is that effects of the vaccine are smaller than the effects of the actual virus. It was an accidental leak of a crafted virus from an internationally funded lab. The world was just SOL

jaybrendansmith 1y ago

We should all be concerned. I was watching Ken Burns, and it seems Washington ordered all his troops to be inoculated for Smallpox, and it made a huge difference in that war. Vaccines are good science, and the amount of testing we do to check safety is simply astonishing. We got extremely lucky with Covid-19, it was a warning shot, and we are taking away the wrong lessons from it. When bird flu comes with 50% mortality (half of the people you know will die, mostly children) we will go into complete lockdown with a required MRNA vaccine and we will thank God or Providence that we have people with the knowledge to make them.

anthonyknox1 1y ago

We live in the fattest and sickest country in the developed world; we were on our way to extinction long before the current administration took office, and the solutions are clearly not more of the same.